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replied about fear of death in valdivia over in the author's notes for that one

(this is in reply to some comments on the author's notes for rpg sketch 9, but it's about valdivia so i'm putting it here)

i think that if i were to try to play valdivia, starting with zero knowledge, with the stipulation that i must not die (that is, if i were a smart sailor who fears death and not a brave or desperate sailor who does not), then that would mean that every time i set out from a port and hit 50hp remaining, i would need to turn around and return to the port. i'm not sure if the map as it exists could be completed that way, but i think it couldn't. i think you need blind faith that the instructions the port inhabitants give you can be completed in less than 100 steps, if you want to assume you won't die, but not turn around at 50hp. that blind faith could maybe be thematic, since i do think the sailor is seeking valdivia as a matter of pilgrimage? but also in the end it wouldn't be proven correct - the final instruction to get to valdivia can't be completed as written within 100 steps - you need to either triangulate a different path, or you need to use a jerky

but also, if i were to play cautiously, returning to port at 50hp, i would almost certainly run out of money before reaching valdivia. i'd have to retire to thelife of a fisherman in yustepa or mezuris, and end the game there. (i do think that's a narratively interesting conclusion)

i think, if you wanted to encourage the player to value their life to that degree, the game would need to make death have a high cost. that means it would need to be longer, and it would need to have saving turned off, so that death means having to reinvest time from the beginning. (i think there are other ways to do it, but that's the most straightforward for an rpgmaker game). i think that the game would also have to have an act i in which you really could effectively with a 50 steps then turn around, strategy, and you would have to not be able to break out of that act one with a 100 steps death-defying strategy while still near the beginning, when death still has a low cost. if you want the game to require the player to make leaps of faith anyway, or run out of money, there would then need to be a wider-ranging act ii, further-flung ports requiring hops of greater than 50 steps (perhaps the first required one would have to have a landmark like the lighthouse at the 50 step mark, to reassure the player that they're on the right path). i think act ii would then have to take away assurances and guarantees one by one. the next big leap wouldn't have a landmark. at some point the path given would be greater than 100, but there might be a port one could escape to at the last moment. and eventually there would be something like that final path to valdivia, where the given path is greater than 100 steps, and there is no escape except for a healing item

healing items would need to either be factored in to what's considered the maximum distance (and therefore not be usable as escape or insurance on the longest path), or they would need to be so expensive that the player considers them almost as dear as the sailor's life. they'd need to ve at least as limited-use as bombs in an stg, if they're to be an escape and not a requirement. and they'd be difficult to balance as a requirement, because they can be chained - the player could spend all of them at once to make a single very long trip all the way across the map

and of course i don't think the game i'm imagining here would be achievable in an hour. i just started thinking about what it would mean to play in a death-fearing way and what would get me to do it, and what an interesting game could look like that's built around it

(i should say that like, earlier in the day i had played both paleburg and sacrifice, each of which took me multiple tries to beat, and each of those tries involved trying something i wasn't certain of with the knowledge that death was at least as likely an outcome as success - so of course when i got to valdivia i played it with the same mindset. i never did just strike out into the open sea to see what i could see, expecting to die, but i did trust the port inhabitants' guidance even when it required more than 50 steps. when i died it was usually from being inefficient in my navigation of a coast line, or just from not paying attention. i assumed saving was turned off, so i just optimized the beginning of my route and repeated it with each death. at the game's current size, that never made me afraid enough of death to play truly cautiously)

i do want to say - i'm really enjoying these, and the fact that this one made me think this much about it is a success in itself, i would think. i do think it's my favorite of them after dalig the ghost killer

i've been binging these - and each one you've talked about as too difficult has felt like exactly the right difficulty to me, while a few have been too easy. i think that a sketch is actually the perfect place to err in the direction of more difficult - a sketch is short, and there's relatively little cost to starting over from the beginning and trying a different approach. (in fact, in valdivia's notes, it seemed like you had the assumption that the player should not have to die to explore, but the cost to dying is so low, so why wouldn't they?) i'm not really sure you even can have a meaningful routing puzzle at lower difficulty than this or valdivia - at least if the only outcomes are death or victory. (the shepherd one had score based on the remaining health of the sheep, and that made it possible to have an incredibly easy routing puzzle to get a c, a somewhat difficult routing puzzle to get an a, and an actually difficult routing puzzle to get an s)

but, my taste and ability may run toward the more difficult anyway. i definitely do want the game to make me engage with its systems and ideas. your work (both these sketches and other games you've published) generally does do that, and that's more than can be said for the majority of jrpgs. but i might not generally be the player you're trying to appeal to with these sketches. i suspect that the audience you already have appreciates your bias toward difficulty though

After a couple of days of practice, I just got 18765. The only strategy I'm following is move forward as much as possible, stay as high as possible, activate as many bombs and drills as possible, kill gems when there's an easy opportunity, and then focus on gold worms once you get to them.